Jillian and the Mastropietro family: Image Via NBC.com
On the season premiere of Jillian Michaels’ new reality series, Losing It with Jillian, the tough-loving trainer brings the Mastropietro family back from the brink after life got off course 22 years ago with the death of their newborn son.
This larger-than-life Italian family is poised to receive both a physical as well as an emotional makeover as Jillian moves in with them for five days to uncover the unprocessed pain and harbored sadness that has driven this family to overeat for the past two decades.
The Mastropietro family of Wilmington, MA is headed by Jimbo, the father of clan, who had unsuccessful gastric bypass surgery. He and his wife, Agnes, are serial yo-yo dieters but desperately want to lose weight and get healthy for their daughter’s, Michelle, wedding later this year. Michelle also had gastric bypass surgery, but unlike her dad, lost weight and has kept it off.
Jillian’s first encounter with the Mastropietro family is at the local fitness center. Short on time but not on determination, she gets the family sweating in a matter of minutes. Later that evening, the Mastropietro family prepares a usual dinner of meatballs and sausage and fried chicken, and in true Jillian-style, the fitness trainer makes no efforts to hide her disgust.
But after just one day spent with the family, Jillian soon realizes that much of the family’s dysfunctional relationship around food is centered around the loss of their infant son, James. Finally after 22 years, the family openly grieves together and accepts that so much of their endless eating and their voracious appetites has to do with trying to fill the emotional pain left by their deceased family member and very little to do with food itself.
Whether it was weight loss surgery or an insatiable appetite, these immediate fixes only quelled one symptom of the family’s core issues and that true healing from the inside out must now take place.
Jillian returns to the Mastropietro family six weeks later at Michelle’s wedding to check in on their progress. The entire Mastropietro family had undergone a complete change: Jimbo and Agnes lost weight, Michelle finally found her inner self confidence and the two sons also shed pounds.
Unlike the Biggest Loser, where the physical transformation is clearly evident, the weight loss with Losing It with Jillian is more subtle, but even so, fans will not be without heartfelt stories, personal and physical evolution and of course, a few rivers of tears.
Stay tuned next week when DietsInReview.com recaps episode two of Losing It with Jillian.